The Event Wiki:Manual of Style
The below are guidelines attempting to describe the style with which articles and article content should be made. For a more general guide to editing and interacting on , see the The Event Wiki:General usage guide. Convention By convention: :use The Event in bold type (The Event) to indicate the name of the show; :use The Event in italics (The Event) to indicate the central mystery of the show. New article titles If the information merits a new article, following existing convention is a good rule of thumb: Singular vs plural *When an object or theme occurs once, leave the article in the singular form. *If the plural is significant to the show, like in flashbacks, use plural rather than singular. *To link to Flashbacks, for example, one can use flashbacks or flashback. If the article name was plural, one would have to use flashback to change it to the proper sentence form a lot of the time. *Category names should always be plural. Capitalization * Use lower-case, except for titles and proper names, for which a capital letter should be used. Like singular names, this reflects the most common way one would use the term in a sentence; for example - Sean went on a cruise with his fiancee. ** There are exceptions to this; mainly acronyms. CIA is an acronym, for example. A/An/The in page titles * Avoid using A/An in page titles, except for proper names when you should use a "The" **Almost every simple noun related to the show could be described with a "a/an". For consistency, and for making it easier to link to these subjects in a sentence, avoid using "a/an"; **Use "The" if that is part of the proper name of the item. Proper names (people) * Whenever possible, use the full name of the character. :* Use noncanon nicknames only as a last resort, when canon names are not known. :* If part of the name is discovered at a later date or corrected, the article may be nominated for renaming (see below). * If the character goes by a very common nickname, maintain it in quotes ("). :* Add a redirect by the nickname as well (see below). Symbols *Wikitext does not read symbols well--whenever possible, spell these titles out. **For example: Instead of "&" (an ampersand), use "and". Simplify *Generally, the simpler the title, the better. For example, rather than "List of all the places that are referenced", the title Locations says it all and is easier to find on doing a search. Exclude unnecessary words such as "List of", "Appearances of", etc. for this reason. If the specific purpose or significance of an article needs further explanation, go into detail in the body of the article. Conventions within articles Headings * All headings should use the same capitalization rules used for article titles. * Italics, bold, and links should be avoided in headings. Links in particular may be difficult for some users to see within headings. Use bold or italics for emphasis *Create bold text by wrapping the title in three single quotes; i.e. 'Sean' results in Sean. *Create italicized text by wrapping the title in two single quotes; i.e. Leila will result in Leila. Links * Wikify text where appropriate; i.e Elias Martinez will result in Elias Martinez. * Not every word in an article needs to be wikified; it is fine just to wikify the first mention of a word in that section of the article. Categorize Please place the article in any of our categories at the very end of the article. For the complete list of categories, see . Be as specific as you can with the categories. Remember that sometimes articles will fit into more than one category. Do not categorize user blog posts or theory tab articles. *If you are unsure what category your article fits in, you can leave it uncategorized. Sysops and others can use a special page for uncategorized pages to see a list of pages that have no category. The goal is to keep this list empty. Never sign your contributions to articles The wiki concept is not single authorship, but rather a collaborative effort. You might be extra proud of your article, but it will be mercilessly ripped apart by the rest of us. Signatures found in the articles are to be deleted, with the singular exception of long transcript articles (see below). (For any questions of authorship, refer to the Creative Commons license.) Always sign your contributions to talk pages While there is a log entry left for your edit, please sign comments on a talk or discussion page using the signature button on the edit toolbar, or with four tildes:~~~~ Present versus past tense *Except for within episode articles, descriptions of events in the Lost storyline should be written in the past tense. Within episode articles, see The Event Wiki:Episode Manual of Style. *Article biographies of living characters should begin in the present tense; biographies of deceased ones should begin in the past tense. *Picture captions should be written in the present tense, and should end with periods if they constitute complete sentences. No personal pronouns The second person pronoun "you", and the first person pronouns "I" and "we" as well as "one" should not be used in articles. The implicit second person pronoun "you" should not be used in imperative sentences. Examples: :*Incorrect: When we saw Kelvin's blood, we knew Desmond had accidentally killed him. ::*Correct: Desmond apparently killed Kelvin accidentally. :*Incorrect: See this video for yourself! ::*Correct: This is a video about ____. Spelling and grammar Before submitting, use the Show preview button and read again what you wrote. You might find that you did not convey your idea as you wanted. Hit the preview button until you are happy and proud with your submission. *If you don't feel confident with your writing style, spelling and grammar, include the message "Proofread Me" in the edit summary, encouraging another active user to read and edit your contributions. *Utili'z'''e US English spellings. If British English spellings are used it is not a major priority to correct them but you may. *Do not change US English spellings into British English. The show is made in the US, and the site is updated to US airings. '''A picture is worth a thousand words'. If you can, put an image in your article. An image helps clarify the subject at hand. Presentation goes a long way. Wikisyntax makes it very easy to edit and categorize information. One extremely useful tool is multiple, nested layers of headings (see example) Episode articles Articles about episodes of The Event carry their own set of conformity conventions described in The Event Wiki:Episode Manual of Style. Conventions agreed upon in the Episode Manual of Style supercede those listed here for episode pages only. Redirection and list conventions Duplicate or redundant articles should not be created. A redirection page is one that automatically shunts a search for a particular keyword into another existing page; they can be created by typing only #REDIRECT Page name here in that article. Do not create pages with just lists of article links that duplicate existing categories. These should be redirected to the category in question by typing #REDIRECT Category:Name here (adding the first ":'''" is necessary to avoid categorizing the redirect page back into itself). Ex: Director List articles should have some limited info aside from just listing links (such as episode info, etc), however, they should not go into a huge amount of detail of each item, rather linking to the main page where necessary. Some portals are list pages (that are aesthetically arranged to help aid the viewer in navigation); see Ex. Portal:Locations. Disambiguation page conventions The purpose of a disambiguation page is to assist a user who has searched with an ambiguous term in quickly finding the article actually being sought. Begin a disambiguation page with the ambiguous term or terms in '''bold and a brief disambiguating phrase such as "may refer to" or "can mean", followed by a colon. This should be followed by a bulleted list of links to the various applicable unambiguous pages. * No bold should be found anywhere in the bulleted list. * Only one wikilink should appear in each item in the bulleted list. More than one wikilink per line defeats the purpose of disambiguation. ** Exception: if the main link in the disambiguation line is a redlink (i.e., if an article has not been created for it yet), other items in the line may be wikilinked, in order to assist a user interested in initiating an article for the redlinked subject with starting points for his or her research. * Be succinct with each line, assisting in quick disambiguation. Do not place periods at the end of the lines. If a line needs a period because it has more than one sentence, be merciless in editing the line down until no period is required. A disambiguation page is not an encyclopedia article; its function is merely to provide a bridge to the encyclopedia article being sought by the user who searched for the ambiguous term. * Do not use crossref templates in the bulleted list; instead use wikilinks or the episode template. The template tag should be placed at the top of the disambiguation page to categorize it as such. Transcript conventions A transcript page is a special page which records one listener's version of what is heard in an episode related broadcast, podcast, or featurette. Category:THEtvEVENTwiki